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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 16, 2020 17:51:57 GMT -5
Also Wylie's When Worlds Collide, as well as AE Van Voght's Slan.
Mythology is the biggest influence, as all heroic stories derive from that, which would put Gilgamesh as the earliest (recorded) influence on superheroes. From all of that stems the operatic sagas, like the Ring of the Nibelung.
Victorian literature has a big effect on the pulps and comic strips that follow, in the next generation, with penny dreadful characters like Spring-Heel Jack, French pulp characters like Arsene Lupin and Fantomas, the Nyctalope, silent film serials like Judex and Les Vampires (and Fantomas), which leads to the pulp heroes (Shadow, Doc Savage, Spider, Avenger, Operator 5, G-8, etc), which leads to the comic book superheroes.
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Post by electricmastro on Apr 16, 2020 17:58:17 GMT -5
Anybody besides me consider Mythology as the real precursor to "super" heroes? Greek, Roman, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, German, Native American and others were full of heroic ideals/archetypes meant to inspire and educate us "mere" mortals. Yeah, I wasn’t trying to discount folk/mythological heroes like Hercules, King Arthur, and Robin Hood. I admit I’m particularly interested in more recently fictional heroes from the late 1800s and early 1900s, though of course I’m not restricting this thread to that either.
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Post by rberman on Apr 17, 2020 11:47:49 GMT -5
So much late 19th century sci fi was incorporated into comic books. H.G. Wells was huge. The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, etc. Likewise Lovecraft in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Post by Prince Hal on Apr 17, 2020 12:59:02 GMT -5
Anybody besides me consider Mythology as the real precursor to "super" heroes? Greek, Roman, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, German, Native American and others were full of heroic ideals/archetypes meant to inspire and educate us "mere" mortals. Absolutely! The Golden Age Flash obviously pays tribute to Hermes/ Mercury, just as Wonder Woman does to the Amazons. Superman, the strongman with a weakness, is much like Samson. He is also clearly like Heracles/ Hercules and Thor, too, minus their notorious tempers. Gilgamesh and his invaluable sidekick, Enkidu prefigure every pair of white/ civilized /urban (often younger) hero paired with an older/ non-white/ native/ (often older) hero who is more directly in touch with nature and the natural world. (Or any realm with which the civilized man is unfamiliar.) Think Ishmael and Ahab; Huck and Jim; Hawkeye and Chingachgook; McMurphy and the Chief; the Lone Ranger and Tonto; the Green Hornet and Kato; and scores of updates and variations, from Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorf, to Andy Dufresne and Red, to Billy Rosewood and Axel Foley. One might argue that Tarzan is a fusion of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, given his facility at making his way in both the civilized and primitive worlds. And there is something of the He-Man Woman-Haters Club in all this at times; Enkidu loses his preternatural abilities (like being able to talk to animals) after an epic week of erotic escapades with a temple wench. (The opposite of what happens to Billy Bibbbit in Cuckoo's Nest.) The sidekick trope flips sometimes to the familiar Batman and Robin trope, which we see in Stevenson's Black Arrow; Twain's Prince and the Pauper; and Kipling's Captains Courageous.The notion of a secret identity also dates to the Greeks, and I'm sure well before. Hospitality was enshrined as a virtue and a practice much prized by the Greeks, understandable in a world as forbidding as their forebears' must have been. To welcome a stranger into one's home was a way to guarantee that you would be similarly welcomed if you were the lost traveler. To guarantee that people would observe this practice -- and regard it as a sign of civilized behavior -- the Greeks told many stories of the gods traveling in disguise to test their followers' behavior. Gods traveled as beggars, as does Odysseus when he returns to Ithaca. Mistreat those beggars, refuse to welcome a stranger and you were in trouble.
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Post by electricmastro on Apr 17, 2020 21:35:56 GMT -5
I also wonder how inspirational the High Lama from Lost Horizon was, considering the hero origins from back then involving lamas, monks, and Tibet: Amazing-Man: Commando Ranger: The Flame: Phantasmo: Plastic Man:
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Post by Prince Hal on Apr 18, 2020 9:34:17 GMT -5
^^ That first picture made me think of Shazam, sans beard, of course.
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